Day Two of I Have Great Friends: Peanut Butter Muffins

Guys, I’m pretty sure at this point that you are well-acquainted with the Fromance I have for my critique partners. A couple of weeks ago, I waxed poetic about the loverly Soozinator for her birthday, and now you get to hear all about PB, or Jess Silva. Also a muffin recipe. (It’ll blow your mind.)

Jess and I are frighteningly similar people. We speak in similar ways (or, at the very least, use webspeak the same), obsess over the randomest fandoms, occasionally say the same thing at the same time, etc. She’s also amazing. Guys, she made the Crits for Water website sparkle and shine, all volunteer, and she’s doing even more work for the Agent Wishlist Open Calls. Plus a plethora of other bits, not least of which is listening and responding to all of my crazy thoughts and ideas.

So PB: thanks.

You may notice I call her PB. It stands for Peanut Butter, obviously.

Two ingredients that really made the flavors pop. The inclusion of the Reeses chips especially.

PB and I also share a love for baking. And several SEVERAL weeks ago, on twitter, we realized that peanut butter and jelly muffins would pretty much be amazing.

So today I made them.

PB, I wish you were here so you could eat them. Also so we could squee together. Also because then you’d be in Japan, and you loff Japan.

Anyway.

This is not PB, but this is also an amazing friend: Jasmine. She lives on the island with me.

These are crazy, crazy delicious. I had two in quick succession they were so good. I gave them to my friends, and they gobbled them down, too. Moral of the story?

I cubed the butter then threw them, and everything else in the above, in my food processor because I was TOO DARN LAZY to wait for the dang butter to soften. It turned out fine, although I also had to process my brown sugar stick, and the processor ended up smoking, at which point I decided it was fine and I could mix it with the dry ingredients.

Essentially, I dumped everything but the milk into a bowl, then once I’d finished processing the sugars/butter, I dumped that in the bowl and stirred. When about half of the ingredients had pulled together, I began adding the milk a little bit at a time, though I ended up using all of it, anyway. This was because

a) I don’t like messes, and if I added all the milk it might have sloshed around too much as I stirred.
b) Since I increased the peanut butter, I was concerned that the texture/consistency wouldn’t be right, and I figured I could just add until it looked good. Three-fourths cup worked fine.

I didn’t bother to sift. I almost never bother to sift things. I live in a very humid climate, so my foods come out fluffy and moist even if I cook it for an extra five minutes.

Speaking of which.

Cook at 350F or 175C. The website says 25-30 minutes, but because of the craziness that is my “oven,” I just cooked it until the tops of the muffins were the right hardness when I pressed on the top (i.e., they “felt” like a muffin/cupcake). For me, that was 45 minutes.

Spread your favorite jelly/jam on top once they’ve cooled.

You’re welcome! Now go make them, minions, though you don’t have to do it as an ode to PB like I did…unless you want to, I guess.

*I didn’t have the 1 1/2 cups brown sugar the recipe calls for, so I improvised. Obviously, then, if you’d rather just use 1 1/2 cups brown sugar, that’d probably work fine.
**I used organic. It was delicious.
***Splitting an egg in half without beating it in a measuring cup is difficult, but totes doable. I didn’t want to use too much egg because I’d up the peanut butter, and I was attempting to balance the wet ingredients to compensate.
****Added an extra half teaspoon of baking powder to compensate for the loss of half an egg.